Photos: Yesterday’s Turn Back the Clock Day in MLB

Major League Baseball had eight teams wear throwback uniforms across four games yesterday afternoon and evening.

Why? One television play-by-play man mentioned it had to do with the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies being held this week, but who knows the official reason…

What we like to do here after a throwback uniform is worn is to compare photos of them side-by-side with the originals, let’s start with the first game played which was the 2000s Cincinnati Reds against the (early) 1970s Atlanta Braves:

No surprise that Cincinnati was pretty spot-on with their uniform considering they probably still had a few lying around the locker room. They did bugger up the helmets as you can see in the photo of the late Ryan Freel above from 2003, a black visor which was not present on the 2016 throwback.

Atlanta, who threw back to the late ’60s/early ’70s got the wordmark right but omitted the patch on the sleeve (and we all know why they probably did). Another issue is the old “Heather grey” which was not replicated at all in the 2016 throwback… hopefully this is something we see in the future when throwing back to this era.

Next up was the 1986 New York Mets taking on the late 1980s Chicago Cubs:

The Mets, already wearing the 1986 throwback regularly at home in 2016, goes with the road grey version of that uniform complete with their 25th anniversary patch from 1986. Main difference (aside from uniform fit, which is a universal issue with throwbacks) is the size and placement of the “METS” wordmark on the front. A little too low in 2016 (look at the photo of Bartolo above)

The Cubs did well by their ’88s, even getting the ultra thick waistband in there. We can nit-pick about the pinstripes, much thinner in 2016.

On to Fenway Park for the 1976 Boston Red Sox and 1978 San Francisco Giants:

Boston looked good with those red caps last night, I forgot how much I missed seeing them when tuning in, they shouldn’t have been wearing the blue helmets though… Everything else looked fairly accurate design-wise (making exceptions for modern things like the MLB tag and Majestic logo), they even tried to replicate the design of the stirrups onto the modern sock, something we also saw below with the Giants…

Those ain’t actual stirrups, they’re socks with a stirrup design printed onto them. I like that. If a player doesn’t like wearing the stirrup then we can still at least replicate the look somewhat. Many of you messaged me saying the cap wasn’t quite right, and it appears you’re correct (look at the logo closely):

Finally the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim went back to the late 1970s to take on the Texas Rangers who went all the way back to the early 1990s to wear the first uniform I ever saw in-person at a Major League game.

The Angels big sin here was the use of the red helmet (but they stuck the retro logo on it which… no, don’t do that!)

Texas couldn’t mess this one up, just a simple wordmark across the chest, and hey! Accurate helmet!

Here in the age of the league-wide Mother’s/Father’s/Memorial/Independence Day uniforms it’d be nice to see a league-wide throwback uniform weekend one day added to the mix. I can’t imagine you’d find too many people who’d disagree with an idea like that.